Recipe template.

_________________________________ Recipe

Ingredients:

5X 2x4 brick	4x dot	1x 1x4 plate
1x 1x4 brick	1x 2x4 plate	1x 2x8 brick
4x 1x2 brick	2x 1x2 plate	1x

Instructions:

1. Gather your ingredients together before you build.

Finish the Recipe Building Challenge

Finish the Recipe

Lesson Plan Overview:

1. Discuss what a recipe is and show examples. 
1. Ask if any of the children have used a recipe before
2. What can you use a recipe for?
3. Examples: Lego instruction manual, cookie recipe
2. Describe the building challenge
3. Break into groups of 2-3
4. Provide 20 minutes for the building challenge
5. Come back together as a group to show and tell our recipes.
6. Do the draw of 5 pieces

What is a Recipe?
A recipe is a type of instructions. It lists the items needed to create something and then detailed instructions on how to create that item. It is often used to described culinary instructions.

Building Challenge
For this building challenge the children will be given a partially defined recipe. It contains a list of ingredients (lego pieces) but does not provide the instructions or the definition of what they are creating. They are required to fill in the rest of the recipe. The building challenge rules:

1. Only the items in the list of ingredients may be used plus one item they can choose (but must draw in).
2. They need to provide some instructions for building the item. The instructions can be pictures or words. 

List of items required:

1.  A cook book with example recipes.
2.  A lego instructions book (aka a recipe).
3.  8-10 copies of the recipe to be filled in (Template blog post).
4.  Extra paper for the recipes.
5. pencils, crayons or other writing utinsils

References:

http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/robolabatceeo/K12/curriculum_units/SimpleMachinesbyDesign.pdf

Lego Pulley Lesson Plan

February's Lesson plan will be related to pulleys and simple machines. 

Lesson Plan:

1. Discuss what a pulley is.
2. Perhaps show the pulleys down stairs.
3. Ask for examples of pulleys 
4. Do the building Challenge - 20 minutes of building time
5. Have the children test out the creations

Building Challenge:

The elevator is broken and you need to deliver a piano to a 5th floor apartment in a building. Build something using a pulley to help you deliver the piano through a window into the apartment.

Items needed:

1. Structure (archway) to put on top of a table to act as the "window"
2. string to use with the pulleys
3. A "piano" to use for lifting purposes.
4. pictures of pulleys used in every day things. 

Inclined Plane -- Marble ramps

In the November meeting we will be discussing Inclined Planes and making Marble ramps.

References:

• http://www.weirdrichard.com/inclined.htm
• http://www.legoeducation.us/content/item.aspx?ap=1&art=4
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclined_plane
• http://teacher.scholastic.com/dirtrep/simple/plane.htm

Goals:

1. Discuss and build inclined planes to accomplish a task.

Discussion Points:

1. What is an inclined plane?
1. An inclined plane is a simple machine.
2. It is a flat surface which has one side higher than the other.



from Weird Richard's site at http://www.weirdrichard.com/inclined.htm 

2. What are some examples of inclined planes?
1. Handicap ramp
2. Slide
3. Delivery truck ramp
4. stairs (versus a ladder)
5. Ramps were used to push large stones used to build the pyramids.
6. construction shoot
3. Why should you use an inclined plane?
1. Requires less work to move something from a higher location to a lower one.
2. Requires less work to move something from a lower location to a higher one.
4. Building Challenge: You are at the top of a hill and you have created a gigantic snow ball. You want to use that snowball to hit a snowman at the bottom of the hill. Build an inclined plane to help you hit the snowman with the snowball (a marble). 
5. Examples of Inclined planes from Weird Richard's site:



From Weird Richard at http://www.weirdrichard.com/images/marj1.jpg

from Weird Richard.com http://www.weirdrichard.com/images/con10.jpg

Materials:

1. 10+ Marbles
2. Legos for ramp building
3. A "snowman" to be the target
4. Pictures or examples of inclined planes.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sch%C3%BCtte_fcm.jpg
2. http://teacher.scholastic.com/dirtrep/simple/img/plane.gif

FRICTION and Car Building

We are starting a new year of Lego club at our local museum and I want to have more of a theme in my lessons this year. I think I will focus on physics and engineering with my 1st graders. There is a great site by xx that has a bunch of physics/engineering oriented Lego Lesson Plans that I am going to try to use:

http://www.marshall.edu/LEGO/plans.html

For our October meeting, we are going to do look at Friction and how it will affect building a car. My reference is athttp://www.marshall.edu/lego/lessonplans/Car1.html

Materials:

• Lego wheels and axles of various types
• Lego bricks
• 2 or more Green lego plates
• sheets of surfaces to test with different resistance levels 
• sand paper
• smooth plastic sheet
• ??
• other materials that have more or less friction
• a pre-built friction car as defined in the specs of the lesson plan in the link above.

My lesson plan:

1. Introduction to lego club and the rules
2. Introduction of children to each other with show and tell
3. Define Friction (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/friction)

1. fric·tion

     [frik-shuhn] –noun
1. surface resistance to relative motion, as of a body sliding or rolling.
2. the rubbing of the surface of one body against that of another.
2. Discuss this with them and how friction can affect speed and such.
3. Discuss surfaces that cause more or less friction
4. Use the pre-built friction car as an example 
1. on a ramp (as shown in the web site above with a green plate)
2. Use different surfaces I brought to show how surfaces can change the speed, too.
5. Discuss how one wheel/axle combination might be faster than another due to friction
6. Discuss when you might want more or less friction with your wheels. (in snow, on racetrack, etc)
7. Have a free time to build their own cars 
8. Test out the cars 
1. on the ramp
2. on the different surfaces
9. Have the children decide which car 
1. was the fasted (discuss why) - Perhaps best for a race?
2. which was the slowest (discuss why) - Perhaps best on a slippery surface or steep hill?
10. If time allows have races.
11. Clean up time
12. Lego draft (each child chooses 10 lego pieces to take home)

Castles Lesson Plan

The Lego Club Jr building contest for the Sept/Oct 2010 magazine is to build a castle. I thought I would build off of this to create a lesson plan.

Goals of the lesson plan:

1. Introduce the Medieval time
2. Discuss why castles were needed 
3. Discuss how castles were built 
1. Materials (how changed over time)
2. castle within a castle
4. Discuss why they stopped being effective and aren't used today.
5. Have them build a castle individually or in groups.
6. Take pictures and email them to parents that are interested in submitting them for the contest.

Material:

1. Books related to castles and how they were built
2. legos for building

I may also suggest to them that they all work on a walled town with a castle. My plan is to see what the children prefer to do and let the lesson plan change as needed.

Interesting Websites with Lego Lesson Plans

I was searching around for a lesson plan for my first grade lego club and found some interesting sites. They are listed below.

•   Contains a long list of interesting lesson plans that build upon one another. http://www.weirdrichard.com/activity.htm
• Contains a list of transportation related lesson plans http://www.marshall.edu/lego/lessonplans/lessonplans.html
• I especially like the Friction Car plan and may try it out soon. http://www.marshall.edu/lego/lessonplans/Car1.html
• This is a lesson plan related building a house or community. http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/pages/351.shtml
• Page that provides links related to using legos as a teaching tool. http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/frugal_homeschooler/82936
• The Lego Education site had a ton of roughed out lesson plans that were interesting. http://community.legoeducation.us/blogs/legosmart/archive/tags/Activities/default.aspx
• Here were two that I considered for my group: 
• The Apollo LEGO http://community.legoeducation.us/blogs/legosmart/archive/2009/12/07/apollo-lego.aspx
• Visually Complementing History http://community.legoeducation.us/blogs/legosmart/archive/2009/12/07/visually-complementing-history.aspx
• I seriously considered doing the Apollo LEGO plan above, but am not sure it will fill an hour of building. 

Simplified Creationary

One of the new and cool games that Lego has put out recently is Creationary. It is like Pictionary but with Lego building instead of drawing. My spouse bought this for our six year old last fall while in Germany and we love it as a family. It is now available in the US, too.

For the August 2010 meeting, I plan to play a simplified version of the game. While the Lego game is well made the cards are a bit challenging for the 5-6 age range with items like zoos, four leaf clovers, and such to build. I have created some home made cards with images of items from clip art and the web like a house, barn, silo, tractor, etc. Hopefully the kids find them easier to build than the ones that came with the game.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Building a Tower with a Twist - Learning about Contractors and Subcontractors

In the July 2010 meeting of the our Kindergartener Lego club meeting our goal was to build a tower. We borrowed the idea from the 2nd Grade club. I was thankful that I had a person to help from the Museum, Heidi. Heidi is a lego lover and was a great help.

 I started by asking the kids if they had seen construction sites and if they thought that it was just one person or many that work at them. With their answers I explained that it take many different people to build a house or a tower. I explained the roles of an architect, a contractor and sub-contractors.

We had the children start by taking on the role of an architect (we needed to know what type of tower we were going to build). They all had 5-10 minutes to draw a tower and then we went around the room (7 kids attended) looking at each drawing for ideas. After reviewing the drawings, I went to the whiteboard and asked them questions about the size and style of the tower that they wanted as a group. It was decided that we build a tower that was larger at the bottom and got smaller at the top. We found a top tower piece we would use and separated into three groups: bottom level (1), middle level (2), and next to top level (3). Each group got to work. As a leader Heidi and I were the contractors and each group was a subcontractor. As such we had to remind the children to stay on task and remember to build things like walls and such. We had a limited time frame in which to build.

At the end of the session we combined the levels. The children added some extra features they found in their searches like a boat and we compared it to the drawing on the white board. It was similar but the 2nd floor was a little larger than the design specified. I stressed how contractors and subcontractors need to work together and talk to one another to ensure that pieces will fit together.

The kids seemed to really enjoy it.

We ended with cleanup time and a drawing from the parts draft box: each child take 10 lego pieces from the box home to keep.

A Lego Mom

There are soccer moms and there are Lego moms. I am in the Lego Mom camp. My oldest son is a lover of legos and has been since he was four years old. This has made me a Lego Mom. While I had seen Legos before my son became interested in them, I didn't play with them as a child. I think my family missed the introduction of Legos as I was growing up. We had Lincoln Logs and such but not Legos. That said, I have become a lover of Legos with my son.

The ability to create something new and stories to go with them is limitless. It helps to promote creativity, fine motor skills, and spatial understanding. Most importantly, it is fun.

As a Lego mom, I have found myself as the Leader of a Kindergarten Lego club at our local children's museum. While searching around for lesson plan ideas for our monthly meeting, I have felt a little in the lurch. There are not as many resources out there that were helpful with this age range 5-6 years old or lego lesson plans in general. I want the children to learn something about enginneering or science instead of just having a chance to build.

I have created this blog to help others hear about lesson plan ideas for a Lego Club and hopefully to hear from others about their lesson plans. If you have a great Lego Lesson plan idea, let me know!